


Now That I See You

by SunshineandCoffee



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Coffee Shops, F/M, Fluff, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, One Shot, Redeemed Draco Malfoy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-07 05:02:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19202419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunshineandCoffee/pseuds/SunshineandCoffee
Summary: A rainy day, a cup of coffee and an unexpected run-in that should've been a nightmare. Except it feels more like a daydream...





	Now That I See You

**Author's Note:**

> Here I am, finally! I've been wanting to write here since forever, but inspiration strikes at the unlikeliest of moments. Looks like it's going to rain outside (A seemingly random detail, but read on). So, here goes nothing...

Her “all-business” Oxfords beat against the sidewalk as she hurried past the swelling London crowd. The rain beat against her skin mercilessly, leaving an array of goose bumps in its wake. She was shivering, cold and she was sure she looked like a drowned rat by now. It had been a long day at the Ministry. She had almost drowned in all the paperwork she’d had to finish.

She loved her job, no one could doubt that. In fact, that job was the reason she woke up everyday, the reason she had put everything else on the line. She didn’t survive with just four hours of sleep a day for nothing. But, in spite of all this, there were times she would doubt everything. Absolutely everything. Her choices, her purpose, her life. She was a human being after all, though Reeta Skeeter and half the wizarding world may not have agreed.

So, here she was, on a rainy day that wasn’t her best. Not that it was her worst. Or at least it wouldn’t be after she’d had a comforting cup of her favourite coffee (hazelnut mocha with extra sugar and yes, she knew her parents were dentists, but she deserved some sugary happiness). Sitting in her favourite coffee shop with a book before her and a cup of coffee in her hand was what she dreamt about. It warmed her to her toes and she absolutely loved the feather light, bubbly feeling it gave her.

Yes, it was solely because of the coffee that she felt that way. That warm, fuzzy and yet strangely ambitious feeling that made her want to do things she wouldn’t have otherwise dreamt of had nothing to do with the obstinate blond with recently-acquired glasses that he kept pushing up his nose, who insisted on sitting opposite her.

Oh, hang it all! This had all started six months ago.

 

 

She had been sitting peacefully, sipping her coffee, completely absorbed in the book she'd been reading (Pride and Prejudice. Okay, maybe she was reading it for the twenty-first time and maybe she read it every year around the Fourteenth of February). And there he was, walking through the door and sending the tiny bell tinkering away. She looked up in her reading and caught sight of him.

This could not be Draco Malfoy. This was a Muggle coffee shop. There was no way he went about walking into random Muggle shops on Tuesdays. Then, there was the fact that the trademark Malfoy sneer was nowhere to be seen. His face looked so... different without it. But then there was also that blond, bordering on white hair that gave away his identity like a beacon. Now he was smiling as he spoke to Valerie, the sweet girl with the choppy hair who made the best coffee in the world. No, this couldn’t be Malfoy. He had the conversational skills of a toothbrush. He couldn’t exchange pleasantries.

And just when she was about to rub her eyes to see if she was imagining things, he smirked. Oh, bugger! It was him after all...

She looked down at her book. She was almost finished. She had wanted to get to her favourite part where Elizabeth found out about the true, kind Darcy. But it looked like all her plans had been tossed ruthlessly out of the window. She took a deep breath and started gathering her things. She had to leave before things became tense. If it came down to it, this would be the first time they would talk after school and it wasn't going to be pretty. She was too tired for all of that. She sighed as she thought of her warm bed in her cosy little apartment. She wanted, more than anything else, to fall back into her bed now.

She got up, pushing her favourite, cosy chair back and voilà, her nightmare was right before her. She could feel her plans slipping away and she steeled herself for what was to come.

“Hi.”

Well, she hadn’t expected that.

“Hi.” She said, attempting to be as civil as she could be. They were not twelve anymore.

She tried to adapt herself to how much he’d changed. He was wearing a burgundy turtleneck that fit him snugly. It was a little unfair. His hair was a little messy, a stark contrast to the gelled-back, slick look he wore in school. The hard lines on his forehead had disappeared. Instead, there were smile crinkles she’d never noticed before. But then he had never smiled at her before. The way he was smiling now. His eyes, as grey as a storm cloud, were soft and even a little amused.

She cleared her throat to distract herself from the funny feeling at the pit of her stomach. Hermione Granger didn’t stare. Never.

He pulled out the chair opposite her, his sleeve riding up to expose his forearm and she caught sight of the dark, ugly mark that she still saw in her nightmares sometimes. His eyes followed her gaze and something changed in his eyes. It was gone just as soon as it had appeared and he sat down, seemingly unaffected.  
There was silence for a few seconds that seemed like ages and she contemplated getting up to leave before he spoke again.

“Pride and Prejudice, huh?”

Draco Malfoy was making an attempt at small talk and something within her urged her to respond.

And just like that, the ice was broken. When they had talked about more than half the classics she'd read, she asked him when he’d started reading Muggle books.

“Andromeda gifted me my first Muggle Classic. It was “Crime and Punishment”, I think. After the War, Mother and she buried the hatchet and decided that they would meet every week at the Manor. I liked her the moment she commented on my choice of socks and she burned through my defences like no one else ever had before. She was like a breath of fresh air. Or should I say, a splash of colour with the horrible hair colours she goes for. It evades me how she manages to look sophisticated inspite of all that.” He chuckled, clearly thinking about his Aunt, whom he had just called Andromeda. Could Draco Malfoy be so familiar and close to anyone? Miracles could happen, after all.

They talked for over an hour. She didn’t know how and it had all seemed so natural. He was a different person. He seemed like a human being and not a sculpture, though his jawline was still as chiselled as before (she could appreciate it up close). His emotions were on display. He showed her parts of him she didn't know existed. He was vulnerable and somehow, that made him impossibly beautiful. She could see how his eyes lost their shine when he spoke of the War, how he fiddled with his sleeves when he asked about “Potter and Weasley”, how he blinked, almost imperceptibly, when she told him that she and Ron were best friends (and nothing more) and smiled considerably more after she told him Ron was on the verge of getting engaged to Luna.

He was more real than he had ever been, and she was laughing after a long time, longer than she cared to admit. She laughed when he almost choked on his coffee as she asked how it was going with Pansy and she felt strangely pleased when he told her she was getting married to Blaise in a few months.  
They talked without holding back, as if they did this all the time. She had realised how much she had smiled that evening and had almost chuckled at the irony of it all.

They only realised they’d been talking for long when the streetlights came on. She realised she had to head home and Crookshanks would through a tantrum if she wasn’t back soon. So, she waved him goodbye. He waved back with something that looked a lot like hope in his eyes. She hadn’t known they were grey for a long time.

“Will I see you again?”, he asked, in a voice that was so soft that she wasn’t sure he wanted to know her answer.

“I come here every Tuesday and Friday,” she found herself saying without much thought.

“I’ll see you then,” he said with barely concealed joy in his voice.

This was a new beginning. It was unfamiliar ground. But, she was beginning to warm up to it and it felt suspiciously akin to a sunrise, if you could feel one.

She smiled. Not because she had to but because she couldn’t keep the corners of her mouth from tugging up. And for the first time in forever, it had reached her eyes.

 

 

She hadn’t been able to stop smiling ever since.

Even as the bell tinkled behind her and the all-too-familiar aroma of coffee greeted her, she could see him at their table, completely absorbed in reading one of her recommendations. His forehead was furrowed and his eyebrows crinkled as they usually were when he was concentrating. Then suddenly, without warning, he looked up. And there it was, the flutter in her stomach. She wouldn’t say it felt like fireworks, because it was so much more.

It was like the Sun’s warmth spreading through her, like seeing a rainbow for the first time, like the earthy fragrance the rain left behind, like the first flight of a fledgling bird, like everything beautiful... all at once.

**Author's Note:**

> That was my first fanfic. I wish I could've finished it in time for Draco's birthday. But, I guess that's the best part about birthdays. They come every year.  
> The title is of course from "I See the Light".  
> I hope this one made you feel warm and fuzzy inside :)  
> Looking forward to some honest feedback, guys!  
> Sunshine and Coffee,  
> XOXO


End file.
